As soon as the clock struck zero in Atlanta and UNC was dealt its second conference loss, its ACC championship odds took a nosedive. One of the team’s stated goals from the outset of the season – getting back to Charlotte and completing unfinished business – is now all but gone.
So, the players and coaches face a question this week, one which is posed to 99 percent of college football programs at some point during the season: what do we do now?
Saturday’s game against 4-4 FCS opponent Campbell, which will neither help nor hurt UNC’s conference standing, is perhaps the perfect test for Carolina under the circumstances. With no larger consequences at stake, the Tar Heels are relegated to that dreaded fate known as “playing for pride.”
But head coach Mack Brown was quick to put things into perspective this week. After all, the Tar Heels’ 6-2 record is better than most programs’, and the team is not as downtrodden as it was before he arrived. As much as Brown would like to be 8-0, he said players keeping their heads up will be key moving forward.
“Obviously, there’s some disappointment for all of us,” Brown said, “but they don’t cancel the games. They don’t cancel the season. There’s guys on our team that won two games one year.”
One of those players is sixth-year senior offensive lineman William Barnes, who enrolled at Carolina prior to the 2018 season. Barnes’ performance in the loss at Georgia Tech, in which the UNC offense put up 42 points, drew praise from Brown and others afterward. As Barnes prepares for the penultimate home game of his college career, he said the team is following Brown’s advice.
“No one’s keeping their head down. No one’s feeling sorry for themselves,” said Barnes. “We know that we have a goal, and we know we still have everything that we want to do in front of us. We know that if we let up now, it’s gonna turn out to be the same year that we had last year. And no one in the locker room wants that to happen. We’re just working toward the common goal that we can still obtain. That’s still in our grasp.”
Yes, it is still possible, though unlikely, that the Tar Heels return to Bank of America Stadium on the first Saturday in December. But unlike last weekend, Carolina doesn’t control its own destiny. Teams in front of them and tied with them, such as Louisville and Virginia Tech, would have to lose for UNC to hop up in the standings.
It’s a lot of math and a lot of what-ifs. Edge rusher Kaimon Rucker said for the team to ultimately make that climb back up the standings, it can’t be looking at hypotheticals.
“The championship is something we don’t really speak on as a defense,” Rucker said. “In order to reach a championship, you have to have a championship mentality, but not look forward to it. You have to take care of each and every game; one game at a time, one practice at a time, one day at a time.
“We can’t look too far ahead like, ‘Oh yeah, we’re gonna go to the ACC Championship.’ That’s not guaranteed. It’s not guaranteed for anybody. So for us, if that is our goal right now, we have to take care of each week, starting with Campbell, and then moving on.”
In the end, maybe the most effective balm for the Tar Heels to ease the pain of the last two weeks is simply playing another game. It would be easy for Carolina to overlook Campbell in favor of its next three games against Duke, Clemson and NC State. And perhaps if the team were 8-0 that would be a concern. But at 6-2 and on a two-game skid, it’s fair to expect Carolina to bring its full effort on Saturday, or else face the wrath of a short leash and a quick benching.
Brown said all options are on the table to right the ship.
“What you’ve gotta do is you’ve gotta play,” he said. “We’ve got a lot of problems to fix. So we’ve gotta do the best that we can do to get better. We’re sitting here talking about all the things we’ve gotta fix, and we’ve gotta fix them. You don’t wave a wand and fix them.”
Though tomorrow’s game puzzled some when the schedule first came out, now a date with an FCS opponent – which many view as an automatic win – seems to be coming at just the right time. All Carolina has to do is focus.
That, and not give up 300 rushing yards.
Featured image via Associated Press/John Bzemore
Chapelboro.com does not charge subscription fees, and you can directly support our efforts in local journalism here. Want more of what you see on Chapelboro? Let us bring free local news and community information to you by signing up for our biweekly newsletter.
